The Pond
The pond of the title is metaphorical imagery. It is not overused, appearing quite infrequently throughout the narrative, but the point is well-established at its first significant occurrence:
“Despite working as the art editor for a small newspaper called Environment, Yen was indeed artistically inferior to Bin in most ways. He had never expected to encounter the `master’ here, assuming Bin had left the plant long ago. How could a small pond like this contain such a big fish? He had vaguely heard that Bin was teaching the fine arts somewhere.”
Shao Bin
The introduction to the protagonist character is also established efficiently and effectively right from the initial appearance. The descriptive prose dedicated to physicality will be important for expanding outward as the story treks forward to take in more abstract concepts of the man:
“Bin was a small man. He used to be healthy and stout, but in recent years he had lost so much weight that people called him Skeleton behind his back. Despite his physique, he was both talented and arrogant. He was better read than others in the planet, and he knew a lot of ancient stories, even the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. What is more, his handwriting was handsome.”
The Cartoon
Bin’s troubles really begin with a cartoon. It is the simple act of using his artistic abilities to make a political statement that starts the ball rolling on its way to Bin’s almost absurdist trajectory which he never saw coming. Just the very simple physical act of picking up a brush made of weasel hair which is dipped into ink before applied to paper. And yet it changes everything:
“On a large sheet of paper he drew a huge official seal, standing upside down. Then on the seal's bulky handle he sketched an ecstatic face with a few hairs on the crown. Up on the seal's flat top, which was in the form of an oval stage, he put a dozen midget men and women sitting together in two rows. He made sure that two of them in the center resembled Secretary Liu and Director Ma. Liu, wearing a handlebar mustache, sat with his short arms crossed before his chest, while Ma's long face was pulled downward as though his mouth was filled with food.”
Bin’s Irony
The consequences of Bin’s drawing his controversial cartoon have profoundly ironic consequences and events twist and turn without warning or expectation. Things go Bin’s way to the point, but the novel succeeds best in revealing how the journey and the destination are often two separate and often unrelated concepts:
“Without Bin’s knowledge, that afternoon the official news of his admission had arrived. It indeed came like a thunder and blew up the leaders’ plan to make a jackass of him in the eyes of the plant. Shao Bin had done it again! Whatever you called him, a lunatic or a mad dog, you couldn't deny he was bursting with talent and energy and was a scholar by nature.”
